


let it out (but don't blame me)

by goldenthrone



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bullets Era, Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Prescription Pill Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Van Days, a fuckton of red bull, drunk gerard is not good gerard, lowercase intended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 02:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenthrone/pseuds/goldenthrone
Summary: to him, it was easier to just keep taking those toxic cocktails and passing out in the same clothes he’d been wearing for the past three days than realise what a fucking mess he looked like.





	

**Author's Note:**

> bullets era!! non-sober gerard!! pill abuse!! generally just check the tags in case anything offends or upsets you !! enjoy this self-indulgent little three piece my lovelies xx

(i)

when frank had first met gerard it’d been pretty clear that he was the kind of person that you had to look twice at to really get your head around. there was so much going on with his face – the wide, translucent green eyes popped out at you first, framed with dark lashes and strong, slanting brows, and then the girlish nose ending in a point, and the thin lips, drawn in an unimpressed line when frank had been introduced to him.

he’d been pissed off about something, and somehow it made him seem even more untouchable to frank. the only thing he had to go on about the older way was mikey’s description, which had failed to mention that he read comic books and loved tolkien and sometimes cried if you shouted too loud at him, so frank had him modelled in his mind as some kind of ultra-cool, troubled-musician type. overall the shitty mood he’d been in had done nothing but reinforce this assumption, despite the fact that he wasn’t what frank had expected at all; he was shorter than mikey, and kind of chubby, his striking features set in a round, almost childish looking face. slightly more forgivable was the oversized black clothing which made him look like he was a rebellious nun with the short, dyed hair, and the overabundance of dark colours played up the paleness of his skin. he was nearly ghostly.

“who’s that?” gerard had said, almost dismissively, from his seat, looking up from his cell only to glance at mikey with eyebrows raised. the ways’ living room was dark and oppressive, all muted reds and fake flowers, like someone’s nightmare of the seventies, and frank couldn’t help but glance nervously at the cuckoo clock on the far wall that looked about 178% haunted.

“that guy from pencey prep you were asking about.” mikey clapped a hand on frank’s shoulder and started towards what was presumably the kitchen. “you want a drink?”

“beer,” gerard replied, and finally set his phone on the rest of the chair to look at frank properly. he looked like a paper cutout in the low light, dark hair unstyled, falling on his forehead slightly and throwing sharp contrast against his skin.

a glass clattered in the kitchen. “frank?”

“i’m alright.”

gerard pulled his feet up underneath his body in a gesture frank registered in the back of his mind as typically feminine. “your band was good. i’ve been to a few of your shows.”

here was something frank could talk about, god knows. “yeah, we were.” gerard smiled and frank caught a glimpse of freakishly small teeth before he realised how arrogant he’d sounded, scrabbling to correct his mistake. “i mean, thanks. it’s a fuckin’ shame we couldn’t hold it together.”

“it’s not a shame, cause now you’re playing for us,” gerard said quickly, eyes flashing. “we start recording on friday. mikey said you learnt some of our songs?”

“i know sunsets and mirror inside out, but i could probably give demolition lovers a go.”

“cool,” gerard said, sounding disinterested again, pushing himself out of the chair suddenly and walking over to the kitchen where the sound of a microwave was now whirring away. his grey sweats were frayed at the bottom and had a hole in the thigh, were a scrap of pale skin was peeking through.

frank watched him go and abruptly realised he was stood in an unfamiliar living room with maroon curtains and cigarettes strewn across the coffee table. he jammed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie aggressively. gerard was implacable to him, with his eyes that glowed gold in the glare of headlights through the window and his mouth quirking with the smallest of smirks every now and again, like he was remembering something funny. it got under frank’s skin.

taking the opportunity to do a bit of exploring, frank wandered across the room, glancing around furtively every now and again as if gerard was going to burst back into the room and bar him from joining the band for being nosey. hung up on the wall next to what he guessed was the basement door was a cluster of photographs, tacked up randomly and framed in garish coloured metals. frank was suddenly struck by an image of what his mother’s face would be like if she ever – god _forbid_ – came into a place like this.

he gave the cuckoo clock a wide berth (it was five to ten and frank was starting to get antsy) and the room lit up again with headlights as a car slushed past through puddles of rainwater. the beam of brightness filtered through the curtains without blinds or a screen to dull it, bathing everything momentarily in unnerving red light. the photographs shone for a second, and frank was made aware of how much they needed dusting, before the room was submerged in claustrophobic darkness again. it really was creepy in here, for lack of a better word, and if frank couldn’t hear gerard and mikey’s chatter through the kitchen door he'd have run for the hills five minutes ago.

there weren’t any pictures of gerard. well, there was one or two, but they were barely recognisable – school photos, where the brothers were no older than ten. there were plenty of mikey, and some of an older couple that frank assumed were mikey’s parents. but evidently the photos of gerard had been taken down, judging by the rectangles of non-faded wallpaper and empty hooks. or they weren’t there in the first place.

“you said you didn’t want anything but i got you beer.”

balancing two beers, a bag of chips and a bowl of ramen in his skinny arms, mikey nudged open the door with his foot, looking like some kind of pack horse.

“thanks, man.” frank was meant to be driving home, but mikey had already set down his food and opened both cans. besides, gerard was making his way back to his armchair with a pop tart in his mouth, and there was no way frank was looking like a pussy in front of him.

“you wanna play gta?” gerard was a smoker, going by the rough edge to his voice. frank wondered how that worked with his singing. “i got the new one last week. it’s pretty good.”

“dude, yeah. that game is the shit.” settling himself into the sofa, which, for the record, was surprisingly comfortable, frank took a mouthful of his beer and glanced over and where gerard was crouched in front of the psone. he had a nice ass, and frank watched him out of the corner of his eye for a second before he decided it was getting creepy. “is it three player?”

“obviously. how are we gonna do our team bonding if else?”

“the last time we did ‘bonding’ i nearly drowned and you broke your arm,” mikey said, deadpan, and frank didn’t ask.

the clock never went off, or perhaps gerard and mikey were swearing at the screen and each other too loudly to hear it, and probably thanks to this frank left at twenty to one only slightly tipsy. he didn’t crash his car, which he classed as a victory, and he only thought about gerard for half an hour while lying in bed, which he probably should have got a fucking knighthood for.

 

(ii)

they recorded the album over a few weeks, in some dude’s basement. he was a friend of ray’s, and his mom was lovely about it all, even the fact that she had gerard screaming his lungs out over the top of _maury_ most afternoons. she’d bring down coffee and cookies and compliment them profusely, which left gerard looking thoroughly mollified for a while.

frank only got to play two of the tracks in the end, and most of his time was spent sat around negotiating shit that probably could be negotiated without him – in fact, most of the time he’d walk out and do his own thing for half the day and no one would even notice. the main reason he’d stick around was to watch gerard. which sounds Really Fucking Gay, mostly because it was a bit. but it wasn’t gerard’s ass frank was watching, it was his face; the emotion that would come across it, the bared teeth, the screwed up eyes, the flush colouring his pale cheeks, and the blank calmness that would descend once the take was done. it was cathartic, fascinatingly so.

gerard was like a spring, pulled taut and ready to fly back into shape, a pencil bent to the point of snapping. you could tell it in his body language. his shoulders would draw and his hands would fidget and tap and he’d barely talk, like he was saving his energy, and then, and then, he’d close his eyes and scream into the microphone in the dark and all the tension would bleed out of him like bad hair dye.

“you ever read doom patrol?”

it was a thursday evening and gerard had just yelled his way through vampires three times. frank could tell he was getting more and more frustrated with each take, his voice cracking occasionally with the sheer force he was propelling the words out with.

“no. it’s meant to be good though, isn’t it?”

“dude, yes! it’s a fucking revelation.” gerard stretched his legs out in front of him, sliding further down in the chair. his eyes were half shut and his face slack. the cocktail of xanax, ativan, red bull and vodka that he’d swallowed half an hour earlier in the upstairs bathroom was starting to take action, apparently, and vaguely frank wondered if it was part of his daily routine.

“m’not massive on comics anyway,” frank admitted, and gerard looked up at him like he’d just confessed to shooting someone. “i mean, i watched batman and robin, but…”

gerard laughed his high, scratchy laugh, and frank felt obliged to give a semi-forced laugh of his own in return. “i guess you read them a lot, then.”

“yeah. i drew them as well.” suddenly the expression on gerard’s face turned a little sad. for the hundredth time that week frank wished more than anything to know what was going on in his head. probably not much – frank had read up on the obscure names on the packets of pills he’d seen lying around. the effects ranged from mild to horrifying but confusion and drowsiness had stood out to him generally. “i worked in new york for the cartoon network for a while.”

“that’s amazing, man! what was it like?”

“it sucked _ass_. pure ass.” gerard didn’t expand on this, opting instead to pick at the arm of the chair absently. then, after a few moments, “i saw the towers go down.”

all the air seemed to be vacuumed out of the room in a second, and it was frank’s turn to look down awkwardly at the ratty arm of the sofa. what were you supposed to say to that? _i’m sorry?_ there was nothing to be sorry for. _yeah, but, like, how close were you_ popped up briefly in the back of his mind, which probably made him an awful person, but fourteen years of catholic education had already confirmed that he was going to hell anyway.

 “you guys alright?” ray, a lifesaver as ever, popped his head around the door and wiggled two cans of beer in their direction. he glanced at gerard, who was staring at some fixed point on the exposed brick wall, and then at frank’s uncomfortable expression, and comprehension dawned on his face like a sunrise. he jerked his head in a ‘let’s get out of here’ gesture and frank, grateful for the excuse to leave, was on his feet in seconds. he considered giving some excuse to gerard, but the guy looked pretty spaced out – the room could have caught spontaneously on fire and he wouldn’t have noticed.

slightly unnerved, frank accepted the beer from ray’s hand as they ascended the stairs back up to the house. he deserved it.

“what was that about?” ray asked in that high-pitched voice frank was sure he’d never get used to. everything about ray seemed mismatched – his hair, his height, his voice, the fact he wouldn’t even swat a fly. he was nearly as weird as gerard

“i don’t know, man,” frank replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “like, we were talking about comics, and he mentioned that he worked for the cartoon network. so i’m like, _that sounds awesome!_ and then he starts talking about 9/11 and having a flashback or whatever.”

ray was silent for a second before taking a drink of his beer. “weird.”

“i’m pretty sure he reached nirvana through all those fucking pills, too.”

more silence, and frank wondered if it was nice, being so drunk and high all the time you couldn’t barely feel anything anymore. he’d mixed copious amounts of liquor and weed before, and while it wasn’t massively unpleasant, the feeling that your head was about to detach from your body and float off somewhere wasn’t the best either. rather than feeling relaxed, he’d felt lethargic, fatigued, limbs so heavy there might as well be lead running through his veins instead of blood.

frank had gotten past the age where drugs – pills and coke, meth and heroin, the real stuff – had stopped being cool and started being the sort of thing you did furtively for fear of being caught. unless you were gerard, of course, who appeared to be either oblivious to or unaffected by the sideways glances the rest of the band gave him when he swayed precariously into a room or trailed off in the middle of a sentence. it seemed like gerard stopped caring a long time ago about what people thought of him. to him, it was easier to just keep taking those toxic cocktails and passing out in the same clothes he’d been wearing for the past three days than realise what a fucking mess he looked like.

 

(iii)

the album sold, just enough to gain them a cult following in jersey, and they – they didn’t tour, because touring included organization and a setlist and a bus. something less hectic and murky and desperate than what they’d ended up with.

and christ, frank didn’t even remember half of the shows they played. after two or three they tumbled into this loud, blurry blank noise, like an unstoppable avalanche roaring down a mountainside. and frank was sat in the middle of the slope with a guitar and a hangover, being swept along by this wall of stage lights and cymbals and screwdrivers at eight in the morning.

they had a van, at least, which is more than some bands that they met had. for frank, it was a tie back down to earth when he felt so elated he might just burst with the adrenaline and alcohol mixing toxic in his blood, even if it was small and cramped and smelled always of sweat and vodka. he’d stagger back towards it at three in the morning, sluggish from an orgasm, throat burning, and mikey would be stretched across the front seats, gearstick pressing into his stomach and long legs trailing out of the open door like a dead spider. in the back there’d be ray, all six foot of him cramped into a corner, empty beer can at his feet and sleep talk on his lips. sometimes otter would be awake, crammed into some improbable place with the blue light of his cell on his face, and they’d exchange brief, drunken words into the dark before coherency abandoned frank in his exhaustion. it felt like home to him, especially in the winter months when the temperature would drop past 40 degrees and they’d keep the heating running.

and just as frank was drifting off, gerard would announce his presence by fumbling noisily with the latch on the sliding door and flinging himself down on whatever empty space he could see. sometimes the space wouldn’t be empty and frank would be jolted awake by a sweaty mass of matted hair in his lap. he didn’t care really. sometimes he wouldn’t even notice gerard’s entrance until morning and he’d spent far too long cuddling a random limb unconsciously, which gerard didn’t seem to care about either.

there were few standout moments on that tour –  well, there’d probably been quite a lot and frank hadn’t been sober enough to remember them – but frank knew he’d have a hard time forgetting one night in particular. they were scheduled to play somewhere in illinois and it was cold as balls out, dipping into the high twenties, too freezing for fingerless gloves to counter, and gerard was missing.

it wasn’t like he’d not come back for one night. all of them did that on a regular basis, stumbled off to an undisclosed location for a quickie and then fallen asleep in place. in fact, it happened more nights than not, which was probably thankful because that van fucking stunk with five sweaty people all on top of each other.

no, this time gerard hadn’t been seen for three nights in a row, and mikey was losing it. they’d even had to cancel a show that night, something that made guilty snakes writhe in frank’s stomach however many times he told himself that no one would really stay for an instrumental show. besides, he wasn’t sure mikey was even capable of doing anything other than walk in circles at that point.

something about mikey’s urgency seemed odd to frank, out of proportion. gerard would probably show up in the morning with the hangover from hell and sleep for a couple days, and it would turn out someone had driven them out to their remote ranch for a fuck and left him outside the gates in the morning sans directions.

“will you stop pacing? you’re not helping the situation, dude.”

mikey looked up, startled. he probably didn’t even know frank was sat on the van watching him pace in a carpark. “what?”

“stop pacing. you look like a crazy person.”

“oh, i’m _sorry_ ,” mikey spat back. frank decided that anxiety made mikey a bitch and shuffled upwards a bit on the bonnet to widen the distance between them. above their heads, the sky looked blue and swollen, like someone had just beat it up with a baseball bat, and frank knew it was going to snow.

the worst part about all this was that frank was sober, mainly because everybody else was. in fact, they were all acting in a similar way to mikey – antsy, anxious, like they were about to jump out of their skins, and frank felt like he’d been left out of a big assembly where they’d announced that gerard was actually the FBI’s most wanted or something. the loss of alcohol just made it all worse, took that soft, fuzzy, surreal edge off of everything so that nerves were starting to fizz in frank’s pulse points too. he examined one of the tattoos on his wrist closely for a moment just so he didn’t have to watch mikey’s unnerving wound-up toy-soldier march back and forth across the gravel.

“where’d you last see him?”

“i- frank, i told you, the show in peoria on wednesday,” mikey replied tautly, taking his sidekick out of his pocket and sliding it open for the thousandth time. “he went off with the bassist of six feet under and i didn’t see him again.”

“did you call the bassist guy?” frank was repeating the same questions over and over like a stuck record.

“yeah. he said gerard disappeared with some drummer, so i called the drummer and he said he didn’t remember anything. fucking ridiculous.”

a pregnant pause. mikey was itching to keep talking. frank suddenly hated this, the echoing loss of things to say, the way everything seemed to have ground to a sudden, frantic halt. everyone seemed to be treating gerard like a naughty five-year-old who’d snuck off in a fit of anger at the confiscation of his favourite toy, or a precious antique misplaced on a construction site. not a twenty-fucking-five year old man who could make his own decisions.

“hey, man. why don’t you go in and take a nap?”

stopping in his tracks, mikey turned to look at frank with his eyebrows raised higher than the frame of his glasses. he looked like he genuinely believed that frank had lost his mind.

“i can’t.”

a sudden surge of frustration pulsed through frank’s blood. “why the fuck not?” he snapped, sliding off the bonnet in one movement. mikey looked affronted, and straightened himself up a little to add that extra inch to his height like he did when spoiling for a barney. all it served to do was make frank a little more pissed. “you haven’t slept properly for at least two days now. you aren’t fucking helping anything.”

“well what do you fucking expect?”

“i don’t know, maybe for everyone to be a little bit more calm-”

“gerard’s fucking _missing_! he could be anywhere-”

“but pacing around in circles all day isn’t going to magic him back, is it?”

“what do you expect me to do? sit around and relax while my brother could be lying dead in a ditch?”

“for fuck’s sake, he’s not dead-”

“how do you fucking know?”

mikey’s voice had taken on this shrill, panic-stricken quality that was abruptly beyond frank’s comprehension, his expression akin to a rabbit cornered by a hungry fox. words suddenly seemed like a foreign concept to frank. they froze, staring at each other with hackles raised and tension crackling in the air like in those old western films. it was like they were daring each other to break the electric silence, and frank felt like he might have to scream at mikey; just scream at him to _tell me what’s happening!_ but mikey just kept looking at him with his eyes wide and urgent, until, until-

mikey’s sidekick was buzzing. frank could hear it through the car-tyre stillness of the deserted parking lot and the world seemed to lurch back to life like a broken carousel. he stood there with the last of the sun setting as the faraway soundtrack of birds and traffic jumped and skipped as if it was scratched, pretending that his heartbeat wasn’t all strung out like elastic.

“gerard?” mikey breathed. frank could tell he didn’t dare believe it yet.

some kind of speech trickled through from the other end of the line, inaudible to frank, and mikey’s shoulders tensed again from where he’d relaxed them. “where are you?”

somewhere, a dog barked, and crying could be heard.

“ge- stop- where are you? tell me where you are!” mikey’s voice cracked on the last word, and frank suddenly felt inherently voyeuristic. this wasn’t a conversation he was meant to hear. his skin crawled as he turned back to the bus.

“please, gee, please don’t do anything you’ll regret. i love you.”

it started to snow.


End file.
